


Good intentions (give me all your trouble and cake)

by lakester



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:15:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lakester/pseuds/lakester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would be too much to hope that the addition of another soul under the Meredith roof would make them perfect in the eyes of Glen St Mary matrons. Perfect would be less interesting, less fun and surely would have less cake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good intentions (give me all your trouble and cake)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazulisong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/gifts).



It was not to be thought that the announcement that Miss Rosemary West was soon to become Mrs John Meredith would have had an immediate effect on the behaviour of the manse children. Nevertheless, sighs were sighed and tongues clacked at the lack of such a change. And not solely to be heard among the mothers of the right-thinking and honest women who he had had the temerity to turn down, or – worse still – not to notice the manifest benefits that each of their daughters had over an Episcopalian.

It had not been to voice those complaints that saw Miss Cornelia Bryant to Ingleside, that ides of September, but after inquiries as to various relatives she had said, on one of her periodic visits to Ingleside, “I told them. He might have chosen a Methodist, and that,” she said, a frown and a shake of her head accompanying the seriousness of such a breach of decency. “That could not be borne.” 

“I rather think Rosemary has more virtues to hold to herself than that,” said Mrs Blythe. Mrs Blythe and Miss Cornelia were sitting in the warm familiar comfort of the sitting room at Ingleside. 

Susan moved about the room, not taking a seat as she might well have chosen to do otherwise. It was not that she was not interested in the forthcoming nuptials, Susan was not a vain woman, and would be the first to admit that she had somewhat less to be vain about than most, or she would be if not for Mrs Andrew Jamieson’s opinion on the matter. Susan would not say that Mr Jamieson’s departure for the vales beyond had been a matter of speed, and was only surprised he had not died sooner to get away from her. Marry in haste, regret at leisure indeed, and some people got to do more than their fair share of regretting.

Today, however, Susan had a new recipe for almond and maple cake, carefully clipped from a ladies paper that was now taunting her from inside the oven, and was not properly prepared to enjoy a good gossip as Mrs Blythe went on. 

“She has a good heart,” said the Mrs Dr, “and I think, a spirit of fun. I do not believe that she could have been better fitted as a mother to those children.” She picked up her cup of tea, almost forgotten in the exchange of news, and sipped at it, eyes twinkling from behind the cup's rim. 

“Oh yes. I admit there are benefits to the match,” Miss Cornelia said with a nod, “Though family dinners with Norman Douglas are bound to be-” She paused, searching for a suitable word, and continued, “-interesting ones. Or perhaps explosive. Mind you, the minister does hold his own against that irrepressible man.” 

“You don't think Ellen will restrain his tongue?”

“I think,” Miss Cornelia said definitely, “That there is not a force in this world that would make Norman Douglas a quiet man and Ellen West is not fool enough to try when she finds such entertainment in it. If the good Lord has not seen to it, then all the rest of us must bear our own trials.” She took a second biscuit, with an approving look at the shortbread, before taking a bite. 

“He does look well on it, don't you think?” Mrs Blythe said, smiling, both at her good friend, at Susan and at the beautiful pinks and red that were sliding over the horizon in pursuit of a sun that was as reluctant as she to leave such a beautiful fall day. Fall was not spring, with the liveliness and gaiety just bursting out of the world, so you just felt as if you had to dance. It was the warmth and steadiness from which brightness was all the more treasured to glimpse from the end of a golden summer.

“Norman Douglas has never had an opinion he had that he didn't like. And he's especially smug now, with having finally persuaded Ellen into marrying him.” Miss Cornelia sniffed at the intransigence of men in general and the Douglases in particular, the whole clan being of various shades of stubbornness. “Do you know the exact date of the weddings yet, Anne dear?”

“I think it is to be the last Saturday in September, Miss Cornelia,” Anne Blythe replied. “There are some cousins of the Wests that could not make it any sooner.”

“I do think it is a bit overhasty, Mrs Dr dear,” Susan put in, having abandoned her distracted culinary vigil, “If it were me, I should like to have some time to enjoy being engaged in front of people.” She smoothed down her apron over her knees carefully, perhaps imagining a dress that flowed more and fitted better than the cotton fabric under her hands.

“Oh, but I would have married Gilbert as soon as I could,” his wife exclaimed. It was as true as any time she had said she loved him, a bone deep emotion that she hoped Rosemary, and Ellen too, were, or would be lucky enough to share.

“Still,” said Miss Cornelia, more practically, “It is to be hoped he remembers to be properly dressed for his own wedding,” She tutted again at the thought of Mr Meredith's conducting a service in slippers, and comforted herself with the thought that he must be more careful at his own.

\---

It was some days later – two births, and the death of Mrs Amos Duncan, which had been expected, by Mrs Amos at least, for sometime now, that John Meredith stepped onto the train platform on his way home and looked up at the sky. 

The evening had reached that particular twist of twilight purple when the late train rattled into Glen St Mary station. That fade of colour hinted at a promise of the memory of the echo of stars to eyes that had the longing to see them and the patience to wait, gaze uplifted as the clear sky slipped from dusky dark to an ink set with bright sparks.

Of course, stars were all very well, but they couldn't be eaten nor would they make a garment fit for a bride, save for in myth and legends of the fairy folk.

Certainly not one in which Rosemary, fair hair crowned with stars as well as beauty, could stand up in church in front of God and congregation and Mr Porter without causing raised eyebrows and shocked murmurings that might draw the attention of even the most attentive groom. 

Mostly on the part of those members of the congregation, securely wrapped in decent layers, who had been unsettled by the Reverend's choice. The thought, mother to the hope, that the soon to be former Miss West would be able to bring both manse house and children onto a tighter rein would not be eased by a golden aura and shifting light, sooner than by white silks and a veil. 

As to others - Mr Porter's opinion on the matter being one regarding which John Meredith was not certain, and God's being something that he felt no need to worry on as he trod the familiar path home. The almighty was sure to love the true and beautiful heart standing before him clothed in starlight or ashes, or the yards of white silk and muslin that had preceded him, following that climbing path to the West house, where those women-folk who had not been driven sharply off with the edge of Ellen West's tongue had descended needles in hand. Neither West girl having had much mind to the provision of her trousseau for some years now.

As careless of the wind whipping at the edges of his coat as he was of old Joel McGregor's horse and old Joe himself, Mr Meredith's thoughts found themselves caught up in the uses of celestial imagery for matters of benediction and blessing. If pressed on the matter on his return to the manse the Reverend Doctor might have been able to answer that it was the horse that knocked him into a puddle that was more mud than water and the man who had apologised; an improvement over the last months where the disruption, not to mention the squelch as he trod would have hardly registered at all.

As it was there was no-one there to enquire. He absent-mindedly picked up the heavily salted slab of cold mutton – Aunt Martha's horror of herbs might have extended to a revulsion for the humble mint but she could not be stirred or shaken from her devotion to the salt - left out for him. 

The cat – if it had a name, it kept it close to its chest as such creatures are wont to do – stared malevolently as the focus of its evening plans sauntered into the distance, the soon to be followed by thud of the study door that said cat had been unable to penetrate. its mournfully hopeful whine did no good, and - thwarted - it scratched at the wooden frame, and its displeasure expressed settled down to sleep.

\---

It was not often that Miss Cornelia Bryant was shocked into speechlessness, happening as it had but rarely when she was the daughter of her mother and more rarely still since she had acquired Marshall as a husband. A good man as he was and one she would not consider trading in like the Donaldsons had their new buggy after Clyde Donaldson had driven it through the surf, seeing mermaids through the bottom of old Magda Donaldson's home brewings. She had told Marshall it had been enough marrying him the first time, she could not abide the inconvenience of doing it again, and manlike he had looked up from the paper and snorted with a smile that quite made her remember why it had been worth the bother in the first place. 

So it was perhaps for the better that it was Miss Florence McAllister that the looked around the church door, seeing not the spire reaching hopefully into a afternoon sky that was as blue as might be seen in the calm of seas and the eyes of children. Miss McAllister might not think so, but then her mother was a Daws, which entirely accounted for her faint upon seeing the smoke billowing out from the manse, and a long held tendency for her face and hands to swell up when she ate strawberries.

Strawberries had been far from Una Meredith's mind that morning when she woke up. It was a Saturday, so there was no school, no well packed pail to carry, no classmates to share worried glances with when Miss Green asked someone to parse a sentence correctly. Una liked figuring more than she did reading, at school it seemed as if the words were pinned down like butterflies and fixed so still and dead. The torrent of words that came from stories told in Rainbow Valley with Mary or Walter's voice slicing through the evening, carving pictures and people so real she could swear – if she swore, Una didn't but she had known Mary Vance too long to remain unknowing of some words that she simply mustn't say, not even deep at night when Faith was asleep and only God could hear her – she could see them.

“Do you think it'll be today?” she asked Faith anxiously, her voice popping out from beneath the huddle of blankets they slept under. 

“Mmph.”

Una rolled her eyes, and poked a finger at where she thought her sister's arm might be. Faith moved and stretched in the night, leaving the blankets a mess and sometimes falling out of the bed. They might be growing too big to share soon, but neither wanted to draw attention to the fact. The last year both girls had blossomed, not in their looks, for Faith was as golden brown of hair and rosy-cheeked as ever and Una stayed pale and big-eyed, her dark hair falling down her back.

She gave Faith a final poke and got up. Una had picked up a hairbrush and was counting strokes under her breath. “I don't know,” came from behind her, and moments later a tall blonde figure scrambled out of bed. “Maybe.” Faith plucked the brush from Una's hand and began separating her sister's hair into braids. Una had very soft and faded memories of her mother doing the same thing when she was small and curled up on mother's knee, and mother could magically transform a tangled mess – Una had tried but failed to keep her hair in a cap – into an ordered pattern.

Faith had had a tendency to leave Una's hair falling sideways, to tie it too tight or too loose, so that the Maywater ladies used to sigh, and call them poor dears. Now her hands, and Una's, were quick and sure, and two dark, straight ropes fell past Una's shoulders.

“I'm worried,” Una said, face still, but her lower lip trembled and she bit at it to still it. “I don't want to lose another mother.”

“Mother will be fine,” Faith said with more assurance, all the Meredith children having taken to usually calling the new Mrs Meredith so, with diverse degrees of hesitancy. She was so dear and sweet, that Una very rarely thought of her panic and fear at Mary Vance's tales of stepmothers, but sometimes she just had to go out in the graveyard – Maywater being too far away – to talk to the mother that had her eyes, not in apology but in remembrance.

“Aunt Martha called Dr Blythe last night,” Una protested. Aunt Martha's antipathy to doctors being lesser than her concern for John's new wife, despite a few early clashes in the kitchen before Martha had conceded the field grumbling.

Faith's eyes shifted to her buttons. There suddenly seemed to be very many of them before she raised her head, a defiant look in the flash of her eyes. “Mother had us four, and Mrs Blythe had six babies and bad happened,” she said, unaware of the hole Joy left in the House of Dreams. “Ada Drew says that her aunt has had twelve!” Privately Faith wasn't so sure about that, Ada being a slight, snippy girl with a knack of saying things that sounded right when you heard them, and then realised weren't quite as good and true as she had made out.

Any discussion on the number of Drew children had to wait as a thud of boots on wood clattered to the door, and Carl stuck his head around the door. The usually clear-blue eyes were a little darker, a little worried, as he said, “They are taking mo- Mrs Rosemary to the hospital. It's as a pre-cau-tion-ary measure,” sounding out the last words carefully.

\---

With a house altogether too quiet – Aunt Martha having taken one of her turns and gone to lie down in a darkened room – the four Meredith children had looked around at each other.

“Do you think we should pray?” asked Faith, unduly hesitant.

Jerry shook his head, hair falling into his eyes. “Father says one mustn't bargain with God. If we pray now, when we forgot to before, it's just like trying to bribe Him.” John Meredith had, in fact, been making a related but similar point in conversation with his son. Jerry had been in Charlottetown the last week, writing his examinations as he was supposed to, and attending a Quaker meeting which some people were firmly of the opinion that he should not. It shouldn't ought to have done any harm, and if Elder Roberts daughter wasn't getting married next summer and visiting town for a fitting then it wouldn't have.

Hours passed, though Faith having declared she 'simply must move about' had left and Jerry followed her shortly. Una could see from the sitting room window that both had made their way away steadily, Jerry in the direction of the beach, Faith towards Rainbow Valley, both apparently lost in thought. Una could wait, she thought, but there were things that needed to be done. She might soon have a baby brother or sister. Una wasn't sure which she should ask for, and in any case Father and Mother were sure to have asked already for the best possible baby.

She got to her feet, decided, stepping over Carl, intent on the slow thirrup of the latest insect to stay in his shirt pocket, little feelers pressing at the buttons.

The kitchen was unusually warm and Una picked up the big mixing bowl, a ceramic monstrosity with a face carved on the outside that stared at you and put it on the table. She found the little notebook full of recipes, copied down in her round and careful hand, recipes that Rosemary had taught her. Una knew that she didn't know a lot about cooking. Alice Fraser had laughed at her in class last month over Una's bread and sandwiches. She knew that she was still learning, but Una was determined, and a little crinkle settled in her brow as she rolled up sleeves and opened cupboards.

The eggs were easy and the flour, but after that the list of instructions seemed to slide off the page. Una's arm hurt as she churned the thick and sticky mixture. The fruit stuck to itself, to the pan and the spoon and it was a valiant battle that saw Una close the oven door and leave the cake to baking. If you looked at a cake too often you killed it, so Susan Baker said, and while Una wasn't sure how she might break something so solid, Susan's cakes were second only to Mrs Philip Wright's, and she says Mrs Wright uses French marzipan which is unpatriotic.

A look of concern glanced off of Una's face. She should check her cake, but she was so tired – some from worry, but mostly from working so hard. It was a good clean ache in her arms and her feet, that pushed her to sit down, to fold her arms and just put down her head on the pillow of her arms. Just for a moment and then she would, she would...

Mr Stewart, three parsons before the present Presbyterian incumbent had had the telephone installed, thinking it useful for pastoral calls. However, he had been somewhat odd, and had left – for Toronto, or for England – convinced that it had been a waste of time and an ugly contraption to boot. It wasn't until Mr Hayes – good speaker, poor choice of texts, married one of the Brown sisters – that the telephone came into more frequent use.

The insistent ring drowned out a pleasant dream winding through Una's ears where a soft, rich voice wove pictures out of air. The echo in her mind was not enough to resist the constant call, and she moved as quickly as she could. Aunt Martha was suspicious enough of the machine in the normal run of things, with one of her heads on it would be worse.

But it was Carl who reached the telephone, picking up the receiver as Una could only watch. He nodded, said 'Yes' a few times, and 'Thank you'. A telephone was best made quickly, as it was there were perhaps half a dozen receivers down, and whatever news would spill out of Minnie Parker when she came home from her job at the exchange.  
“We have a brother,” Carl said, “It's a safe delivery.”

There were more words, but they were lost in the hug that Una enveloped him in, as joy filled her up, leaving no room for sorrow or fear.

“Una,” Carl said, looking over her shoulder. “Is something on fire?”

“No?” Una turned to see smoke issued through the open door to the kitchen.

The cake was on fire, green flames and blue snapping up from the tin, though thankfully not the oven. 

Una picked the cake up, the almonds and cherries going up in an impressive plume of smoke. The heat of the cake was obvious even through her double-wrapped apron. In retrospect Una should not have run out into the Methodist graveyard, nor should she have dropped it quite as suddenly. 

Carl took a little longer to find a pail, Una's attempt at baking having used up trays and tins and bowls that went far beyond the most expansive of household economies. An battered bucket with a creaky handle was wedged under the sink basin, an old drip plinking against metal. Repairs to the manse had continued apace the last few months, but corners and cracks remained, as he tugged it out and hurried out after his sister.

In the graveyard the mostly burnt cake had shattered and split. A few pieces had landed on gravestones commemorating Hezekiah Finch and his wife and their eternal rest - Mrs Finch had always been partial to cream horns and macaroons - with most of the others scattering about the grass where they smouldered, flickering with flame. Una followed the patches of burning grass, patting them out with her smudged apron, while Carl tipped dishwater on the stubborner flames.

Una and Carl collapsed, damp with grimy water and soot, on the ground. Not on the graves, they would later assure Father of that, but admitting to the accusations of exhausted, relieved laughter.

Seeing this, and having quite the breadth if not the depth of imagination of Anne Blythe and the gossip of any two Glen St Mary dames, Miss McAllister was quite beside herself as she told her sister-in-law, her good friend Mary, Mary's two cousins visiting from town, old Mrs Thompson and her horse and buggy until the tale made its way, as most did, to an Ingleside fire.

“Well,” said Miss Cornelia Bryant to Mrs Blythe, “It is not that I do not understand the reasoning, nor can I blame the girl. Nor Carl either. It would be much worse if the manse had burned down, but really Anne, even I have never advocated burning Methodists alive after they are dead!”


End file.
